DfR Solutions' Insights

Space-bound systems use 65nm Radiation Hardened FPGA technologies that are nearing end-of-life (Xilinx Virtex 5QV). Rather than redevelop these systems using the next successor FPGAs at 40nm, which offers only a limited improvement in performance, the industry finds it necessary to skip this generation and start performing viability analyses on the 28nm FPGAs instead.

Although these FPGAs are said to be unprecedented in performance, their state-of-the-art 3D packages (see Figure 1) and 28nm feature sizes lack the empirical test data necessary for designers to make critical reliability decisions on whether this new technology is a suitable replacement for the Virtex 5 FPGAs. DfR Solutions will investigate the reliability of the Xilinx -7 Series 28nm products in this qualification activity.